This study delineates the relationships between social background, classroom experience, and academic abilities. Classroom experience is mainly judged in terms of students' affective dispositions. The objective is to clarify how these dispositions are shaped by the personal and situational factors in a child's social background, and then how they, in turn, shape academic achievement. Two types of affective dispositions are considered: first, a student's inclination or ability to apply himself/herself to the classroom tasks; second, a student's ability to get along with the teacher and classmates. In the first stage of the analysis, these characteristics are specifically related to a student's gender, ethnic membership, his/her neighborhood socioeconomic status, and the type of school (public or private) he/she attends. In the second stage of the inquiry, these socio-personal attributes, along with the affective dispositions and previous academic performance, are used to predict achievement in vocabulary, reading comprehension, computation, and problem-solving. An effort is made to integrate all these variables into a canonical model of adjustment to school. (Author/RDN)